How You Can Make Marketing 10x Easier By Using “The Motown Model” (Another Blue Ocean Niche)

Brian: This is the six figure home studio podcast episode one 36.

[00:00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald beautiful, amazing skinny swole Jack. Cohost Christopher J. Graham. Chris, how are you today? My friend

[00:00:34] Chris: I am good, sir. Brian, I went to a yoga class this morning.

[00:00:38] Brian: freaking hippie.

[00:00:39] Chris: I'm feeling super healthy,

[00:00:40] Brian: No, you're just super hippie.

[00:00:42] Chris: super hippie Howard, super duper hippie,

[00:00:45] Brian: you said a

[00:00:45] Chris: but I'll ask you how you're doing it just a minute, but there is one thing I'm pretty sure bummed about. Well, there's a lot, you guys know going through some stuff right now, but one of the things that I am trying to figure out is.

[00:00:59] My Jeep died a lot.

[00:01:01] Brian: That died a while back. Didn't it?

[00:01:02] Chris: Well, I got the diagnosis finally, like the actual engine is gone and

[00:01:08] Brian: old is that thing?

[00:01:09] Chris: it's a 99, but man, that was my dream car.

[00:01:12] Brian: time to go, man. Get it out of here.

[00:01:14] Chris: it was my dream car. So

[00:01:16] Brian: Well, the old in with the new Chris.

[00:01:17] Chris: it would cost me like as much money as the car would have been worth if it had a running engine in it to get a new engine. So I'm like, I think I'm going to end up buying another car.

[00:01:26] I really wish I could get like an electric engine put in the Jeep Wrangler because that would be

[00:01:33] Brian: not bill for that, man.

[00:01:35] Chris: So if you know how to put electric engines in Jeep Wranglers and would like to trade for business coaching hit me up.

[00:01:42] Brian: What a bum deal. I will take a very high expertise to be able to do that.

[00:01:47] Chris: I'll help you grow your electric Jeep engine business. I just, I cannot justify spending the money on this Jeep.

[00:01:53] Brian: no, don't, this is like we had an episode of like stop being blue collar business owner. And you talked about like keeping your stupid riding lawnmower alive, and that being this weird, dumb thing of pride for

[00:02:06] Chris: I bought a new mower. I bought an electric mower.

[00:02:09] Brian: new car.

[00:02:09] Chris: It already broke. I got to return it to home Depot. Thanks Ryobi anyways. So much for them as a sponsor someday.

[00:02:16] Brian: trash are you done yet?

[00:02:18] Chris: Yeah, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. What are we talking about today?

[00:02:21] Brian: So we talk about marketing on this podcast quite a bit, especially recently. And the core of marketing is really creating awareness for your services. And that really is about harvesting the demand that is out there already. And what we mean by that is people want services that you provide, and you're trying to get your name out in front of them.

[00:02:40] At the time that they're looking to make the decision. And so that is sort of marketing in a nutshell, like you, you kind of get the gist of that. There's another way to market your studio that people don't really think about. And don't really do much. I've seen a few people do this, Joe Wadsworth of the online recording studio guest on episode one, 25 of this podcast.

[00:03:00] This is something that his business is basically built around. It's the idea of not going out and trying to find people who match what you're trying to sell it is. I think at the very beginning, the source of the project, I'm doing a terrible job of explaining. So let me kind of explain better what I'm talking about.

[00:03:16] If you are a mastering engineer, like Chris Graham is, we've talked about some of the past, the path of progress is they have to have written the song. Actually, they had to have had the desire to write a song.

[00:03:25] Chris: Well, let's back up even farther. They have to have learned how to make music

[00:03:29] Brian: That's true. They have to have learned how to write a song. I had the desire to write a song written, a song had that song probably pre-pro or some sort of demo of it.

[00:03:39] Chris: and they have to be happy and excited about it.

[00:03:42] Brian: They have to be happy and excited enough about that song too. Then hire somebody to record it, edit it and mix it. And only then this is Chris Graham mastering come into the picture as a person. That's the only way you get paid is now Chris Graham comes with a picture in this entire supply chain. So if you think about this from start to finish, Chris is the law.

[00:04:01] Well, literally like the last step in the entire supply chain. So it's like you really have a tough business model.

[00:04:07] Chris: It's true.

[00:04:07] Brian: You are entirely dependent on the flow coming into your business of the existing demand. So that's why you focus on kind of that harvesting the demand that's out there. So Google ads, YouTube ads, things that you do a lot.

[00:04:19] This podcast is a great way of taking all the people that need songs that are mastered and then funneling them towards your business. Let's talk about the other way to do things now.

[00:04:27] Chris: Well, let me explain this in a little bit different way too.

[00:04:29] Brian: Okay. Go for it.

[00:04:30] Chris: The example that you use for my business is great. It's kind of like fruit for me to get a client. A lot of stuff has to happen. There has to be a tree planted. There has to be a tree maintained. It has to be fertilized and we have to wait for it to grow big enough.

[00:04:45] And then we have to hope that the fruit comes to fruition. Free tuition. And isn't like eaten by, Oh, come on. It was decent. That was not bad. We have to hope that it isn't get eaten by birds or whatever, but then there's a really small window of ripeness where I can actually pull that Apple off the tree and consume it.

[00:05:07] In mastering, that's a huge shortcoming in the mastering business model. You have to wait. And then you've only got like a week or two or three, depending on the project where you just need to be top of mind at the right time. If you're not top of mind, you lose the project. If you're too busy and you can't turn around fast enough, you lose the project, which I think is a pretty common thing.

[00:05:27] You'll have a client that is, I need this in three weeks. Crap. My normal guy is four weeks out. Uh, I'll go with the other guy. And it's this whole weird thing where it, man, it sure would be nice as a mastering engineer. If I was like, man, I just wish I could help people have more finished songs ready for mastering.

[00:05:45] If I could find a way to do that, to stimulate the market, that would dramatically change my business.

[00:05:51] Brian: So, let me kind of open up our listeners to a different way of thinking about marketing in general. This actually kind of ties back to our episode that we talked about being a Go-Giver marketer on episode 134. So just a couple episodes ago, the five step process for Go-Giver marketing. In that episode, we talked about.

[00:06:06] This same kind of concept where Chris Graham has a lot of steps before they can get to him as a, some of them they're going to pay money. So go give her market. And we talked about solving problems that keep people from hiring Chris Graham. So helping them learn how to write songs, helping them learn how to produce music, celebrities, music, or find the right studio or whatever.

[00:06:24] This is actually taking that one step further. You're not helping them. You're actually facilitating the entire project. This is the Motown model. We can just call it that this is the motel model, where you are taking the raw materials and you are literally being the producer here.

[00:06:40] Chris: Well, and here's the problem.  my line of work is mastering engineer. I can't people go from, I want to be a musician too. I'm a musician too. I want to write songs too. I wrote a song too. I want to, I have a song that I recorded. I did it, and now it needs to be mixed. Well, it's too many things for me to help.

[00:06:59] Brian: That's an enormous amount of content for most businesses and Chris Graham mastering specifically, you can maybe help with one or two steps before you that's basically it like you can't go down to the very beginning of the supply chain in this model though. You can, and that's because you or your team.

[00:07:14] Are managing the entire process. And before you tune out to this, there's a really big benefit to doing this. So let me kind of paint the picture of what this looks like for people. And first, let me talk about why this is so powerful. The average studio, when they are looking for clients, they have to have people that are just looking for their service.

[00:07:30] If you do the Motown model, which is kind of what I'm dubbing, this the motel model. Look at what Motown did back in the day, if you read to be loved or something, it's a biography on a very Gordy. His model was they had the talent hired in house, the session musicians, the songwriters, they had the engineers, they had everything they had the whole machine built.

[00:07:51] And so then they would go out and find the raw talent, the people in the high schools, the young talent that just didn't have the means or ability two, be heard.

[00:07:59] Chris: Yeah, there's two pieces to that. They had the refined talent. That's the audio engineer. That's the James Jamerson, the bass player. That's, you know, the different drummers. They had the different guitar players. That's the refined talent, the songwriters they brought in raw talent. Somebody at the local high school said that girl, you know, this high school girl is 17, 18 year old girl.

[00:08:22] It has a lot of potential. She just doesn't know what to do with it. What if we taught her everything, facilitated everything and we'll call her Diana Ross.

[00:08:32] Brian: I've heard of her.

[00:08:33] Chris: Yes. So like the Motown model was they would literally go to the high school and they would find kids and they would teach them how to walk, teach them how to talk.

[00:08:41] Did you want to sing, teach them how to do harmony, teach him how to dance. And they had all these different things and what they were doing there. That was interesting. And where this applies to us is rather than going around and looking for finished products, looking for ripe fruit, they planted an orchard.

[00:08:57] That makes sense. Instead of going out and being like, well, I really need really talented musician. Who's not a trash musician who has good songs. Who's done the work who has the money who's ready to record and who will show up on time and pay me my 50% deposit. That's a lot.

[00:09:15] Brian: That's a lot of requirements. And that means there's a very few people who match all of those things, which probably explains part of the reason why you're struggling to find clients right now, not Ukraine, but just general people. If they're struggling with find clients,

[00:09:27] Chris: Exactly. So this is about lowering the bar. Well, I'm just going to cut to the chase here. So I did, I did a coaching session, my friend Owen this week, and we were talking an awful lot about this idea. I told him we're gonna do an episode on it. It was super fun. And the basic idea that owned was struggling with was he was primarily working with singer songwriters and same issue that we're talking about here.

[00:09:50] Singer song have to have written a song. That they like that they are motivated to show other people before you can begin to receive money from them to put it in, you know, cold, hard language. One of the things that Owen brought up was he had been thinking about working with singers more, and we got into a very long conversation about this.

[00:10:09] And the basic idea was a singer. Doesn't have the means to demo a singer. It's really hard and requires a lot of talent to be like, Hey, I'm just going to make an acapella. I'm going to write a song. Acapella blows my mind to hear an amazing song. It was written to be performed Capella. So the idea that Owen and I were talking about was what if you found somebody who's aspirational who wants.

[00:10:32] To have music, but they haven't put in the time to learn guitar. They haven't put in the time to learn piano. They're just not to a spot where they're comfortable writing. Can you find this person and let's call her Rebecca. She's a graphic designer for a very big marketing agency in your town. She makes $63,000 a year.

[00:10:50] She's single. She lives with two of her friends and an apartment. Rebecca's got money coming out of her ears. And Rebecca wants to make art.

[00:10:58] Brian: Well, as long as that apartments, not in Manhattan, but yes.

[00:11:01] Chris: is true. This is true. But Rebecca wants to share art with people. And if you can sit down with Rebecca and say, Rebecca, I would love to collaborate with you. And basically do a paid CoLab.

[00:11:11] Hey, I'm going to help you find the perfect song for your voice and for where you're at in life. And we're going to take the raw materials here, the raw talent. Rebecca's got a cool voice. Rebecca is cool. Rebecca has some fields that she wants to make songs about. And we're going to basically facilitate a therapy session.

[00:11:32] You're going to give Rebecca a musical playground. You're going to work with her.  just give her the opportunity to make noises and a microphone, help her turn that into a song. And incidentally, this is the way like Michael Jackson made songs. If you guys go on Spotify and look up thriller deluxe. There's this deluxe version of thriller that came out the 25th anniversary there's stories behind the songs.

[00:11:54] And one of the most interesting pieces on there is there's the demo version of Billy Jean and it's Michael Jackson with a chorus and just going,

[00:12:04] yeah. Like over top of a demo of the song. He's like trying to make stuff up. He's like making up jibberish and they're plugging in lyrics and words as it goes on. And Quincy Jones tells this hilarious story on this album about how Billy Jean is a song about a woman who broke into Michael Jackson's compound and claimed that he was the father of one of her twins.

[00:12:27] Brian: One of her twins.

[00:12:28] Chris: Billy Jean not my, I love her. So anyways, this idea of, can you work with somebody and help them craft songs from the ground up? I would imagine you're going to want a lot more control. You're going to split the songs you're going to own half of them when this is all said and done

[00:12:44] Brian: Yeah, you're going to have more say so of the, over the entire project. Here's the opportunity here, because I feel like right now, this just sounds like a pain in the ass. Like to me, the way you're explaining it.

[00:12:52] Chris: with the wrong person. Sure.

[00:12:54] Brian: With the wrong person. It is, but there is an opportunity to hear that I spot, and there's a couple of things with this, but I want to state first and foremost, this is a 10 X market.

[00:13:01] Chris: I disagree. It's a thousand X.

[00:13:04] Brian: Let me just say this. It is many, many, many multiples of the current market because there are so many people it's like, I've seen studies like 83% of Americans want to write a book one day and they never will. And so it's like, this is the same kind of thing. It's like, there's a huge amount of people now.

[00:13:18] Not all of those people. I have the raw talent, the raw materials to do this, but it is way easier to find. To wait for those piles of, of bad, bad talent to find the right people to work with. And because you are the one that's creating an opportunity for them to finally achieve the aspirations they have for their music, you have more say so in the project, even if they're the ones paying you, you still have more say so because they don't know how to do it.

[00:13:43] And without you, they can't do it. And that doesn't mean you should take advantage or anything like that. I'm not even remotely suggesting that. But what I am saying is because of that, you have more say so on how to keep the project more manageable and less of a pain in the ass. You can set up systems and policies and keep those things in place so that when you do find the talent, when you do find those people that have the raw materials that have aspirations, that frankly have the ability to afford your services as well, that you can get them on board and keep the project from getting out of hand.

[00:14:13] Chris: Well, and there's a unique example here in food. You know, if you go to a super duper, fancy restaurant, you are entitled to be picky.

[00:14:21] Brian: Yeah. When I go to Chick-fil-A, I'm super picky.

[00:14:24] Chris: If you go to Chick-fil-A or taco bell or whatever it happens to be like, you're getting food. And like, maybe they're, if there's a mistake, you're going to say something, but you're not going to be like, you know, this poached egg, it's just slightly overdone it's you can see the yolk is slightly more gelatinous than it should be.

[00:14:41] Take it back.

[00:14:43] Brian: That's how I speak to my servers at fancy restaurants.

[00:14:46] Chris: I'm sure you do. So with a client like this, there's more of an opportunity for a mentorship style relationship rather than the, they say jump and you say how high? And they constantly critique and insist that they're real experts. And fight you every inch of the way. I think that this Rebecca model it's so interesting.

[00:15:08] If you can find a Rebecca , you're working on one song with her and she shows it to her friends. She's not like, quote unquote a musician. She's not like playing out in bands. There's a coolness factor for Rebecca to be like, Hey, I made this song. I really like it. It sounds cool. My friends like it. And when I showed it to them, they were like, Oh my gosh, Rebecca, this is awesome way to go.

[00:15:32] Good job. As opposed to like, You know, guys, I've been in a band for 10 years, I've put out 14 records and I'm putting on a new record and I need your encouragement that I have made a good choice in my life.

[00:15:44] Brian: I feel like we all have that friend.

[00:15:46] Chris: We did. Oh my gosh. Many of us listening to this podcast or that friend

[00:15:54] Brian: Okay.

[00:15:54] Chris: myself included in some ways.

[00:15:56] Brian: Let me say one thing as well. Cause this is, this goes back to that episode with Joe Wadsworth that I mentioned a second ago, where this is the model that has businesses is shaped after he's actually removed himself from all of it. He is just the business owner and the person who does marketing and operations.

[00:16:10] And if that doesn't appeal to you, like this is probably not the Avenue you need to go down, but you can hire out as much or as little of this as you want. There's no shortage of songwriters here in Nashville. If I needed to find songwriters to work with this raw material in Nashville. I can find it. It is not hard to find there's no shortage of engineers, good engineers in Nashville that are underemployed.

[00:16:29] I'll have no problem hiring that portion out. I just want to handle the overarching production, being the producer and making, seeing this from start to finish. And I want to handle mixing. And be the marketer behind my business. I can do that. If I just want to do just the recording side, I can do that.

[00:16:44] You can find talent in any one of these positions, but this is where you're pulling back and saying I'm actually a business owner. Now it's a different thought process. When you have built a machine similar to Motown, you built the machine from start to finish and all you're doing is deciding what part of the business do I want to fit into.

[00:16:59] And then how are we going to fill that top of that machine or the beginning, the starting of that machine with the raw talent and raw materials needed to create the end product.

[00:17:07] Chris: Totally. However, to get started doing this probably. Most of us, not everybody, but you probably going to do it. Barry Gordy did. And you pretty much got to do it yourself the first couple of times.

[00:17:17] Brian: Any business I've ever done. It's always been, I do it myself until I have a good process down and then I hire it out. So you're not going to get out of this, of doing some of it, at least the beginning, unless you have enough experience and talent in that to know even how to hire.

[00:17:30] Chris: Well, and another piece of this that gets interesting that departs from the Barry Gordy model and goes to the Rebecca Black model.

[00:17:38] Brian: Friday.

[00:17:40] Chris: got to get down it's Tuesday, listen to six-figure homes. Do you.

[00:17:44] Brian: Go away.

[00:17:45] Chris: Anyways, the Rebecca Black model for you guys that don't know this song. I think it was what, like 15 years ago it might have been 20 years ago.

[00:17:51] Brian: No, it wasn't that long ago. It was like 10 years at most.

[00:17:55] Chris: Okay. I mean, I'm terrible with this, but Rebecca Black was a middle schooler who I ended up working with a production company. And as far as I understand this

[00:18:05] Brian: 10th, 2011 was when the song came out.

[00:18:08] Chris: nine years, so. Rebecca is mom and dad gave Rebecca a bunch of money. Rebecca gave a production company, a bunch of money, and then they made a song with her. Mostly for her. I would, I would maybe think, I don't know, who knows, maybe showed it all herself. But they facilitated this happening. And my point here is this business model depends on your margins.

[00:18:32] So if you're going out there and you're working for $35 an hour, and you're working with regional bands or local bands, a little bit of money, that's one thing. If you are working with people where you are adding more value, you're helping them do something they could not possibly do without you. So get them in a little bit of monopoly there, and you're doing it for people that have the margins, the money to spend on this.

[00:18:54] Where they're thinking, man, it's totally worth a thousand dollars to me, for me to have my own song or man it's totally worth $10,000 to me to have my own song. There are people like that out there.

[00:19:06] Brian: Well, that's the other thing. This is another area that I talked to people about is people get obsessed over like one lead. Why is this band not want to hire me? They, they, they talked to me, they asked for my pricing. They did. And I'm like, did you wear that creepy guy? Who's obsessing over one girl. And she is freaked out by you right now.

[00:19:22] And the way this ties back to business is when you only have one or two clients at the top of your funnel, you're going to obsess about those people. And it's going to be awkward. You're going to scare them away. And you're not gonna able to get the prices you want. And there's just like all these, these, this baggage that comes with having a very scarce funnel.

[00:19:38] When you open up your market to something as wide and huge as this aspirational singer songwriter world, this is unfathomable fab. I can say the word, but you know what I'm trying to say. It's, it's crazy how big this market is. It's insane how large this market is. And so when you open this market up that wide.

[00:19:55] You can be way pickier about who you work with because you have the pick of the litter. This is also a blue ocean, by the way. I don't know many people that have specialized in having the full supply chain down the full machine down where you're working from start to finish with a project for every single aspect.

[00:20:10] And you're targeting those aspirational singers. When you have that large of a market, you don't need a very big percentage of those to be, let's say 1% of that entire market has money. Has talent, has the desire has like. All the things you need for this model to work. 1% of that market is still probably larger as a whole than the entire market you're currently in.

[00:20:31] It is it's a huge market. So if only 1% is fully qualified, it doesn't really matter. That's still a huge, huge, raw number of people.

[00:20:40] Chris: Yeah. You know, one of the things then I'm thinking about with this is in any business you want to figure out where the ideal customers. Come together. Where are they together? Where does that community? Because obviously, you know, if there was a bar that you could go to on Friday night, that was full of all the exact type of musicians you wanted, that all had finished songs that had not hired you or some, or one of your competitors yet.

[00:21:04] That's amazing. Right?

[00:21:05] Brian: No, they don't have COVID and I wouldn't work with them.

[00:21:07] Chris: Well, this is true, but.

[00:21:10] Brian: The socially transmitted disease, the new STD, socially transmitted disease.

[00:21:14] Chris: Oh, geez. So this bar doesn't exist, right? We can't go somewhere. Were all of your ideal customers are because your supply chain is so long.

[00:21:23] Brian: It's not just a, such a long supply chain. It is also completely out of your hands. You have no control as to how much raw material goes in the beginning of it and how long it takes to get out the end to you.

[00:21:33] Chris: Right. This supply chain is way too long. And as a result of it, your market is way too small. Now the interesting thing here is, are there places where a bunch of ideal customers congregate. Who are aspirational? Do you have disposable income? You want to express themselves who are artsy? And I would say,

[00:21:55] Brian: Yoga studios.

[00:21:57] Chris: um, that's not actually a bad one.

[00:21:59] I was. So I live in Columbus, Ohio, and down the road for me. There are two very large businesses. One is the limited and the other is Abercrombie and Fitch, Abercrombie and Fitch in particular is full. Of attractive 20 somethings who make a lot of money and have nothing else going on in their life,

[00:22:17] Brian: I say, we cut this example out. This is not a good example, Chris. This is, this is a trash example.

[00:22:21] Chris: dude. No, no, no. Trust me. It is like a college campus over there.

[00:22:26] Brian: Okay, quick question. Are you going to be a creepy guy trying to poach people for your business at the

[00:22:31] Chris: No, no, no, no. I'm not saying you would actually do this. I just

[00:22:34] Brian: creepy Chris Graham. Who's six

[00:22:36] Chris: as an example,

[00:22:37] Brian: and like bald going through the Abercrombie. Hi little

[00:22:41] Chris: Hey, y'all want her y'all want to record a hit song. Come on over here and get in my windowless van. It's a recording studio.

[00:22:48] Brian: terrible. What are you suggesting even.

[00:22:50] Chris: My point here is that there are places where all of these affluent, younger creatives who don't have the ability to make a song on their own, but would love to have a song of their own that they can show for these people for this, like, you know, say I'm single and 25 to have a cool song that you can share is interesting.

[00:23:11] Cause I would imagine it would probably help you date there's this is stupid. Why am I talking about

[00:23:17] Brian: I don't know, man. I don't, I'm trying to, it's so bad that I'm like, we need to keep this in. Cause it's hilarious. But at the same time, I don't want to lose listeners. So I don't,

[00:23:25] Chris: I'm trying to make a point here. My example is terrible. My point is good.

[00:23:29] Brian: the point is, and I kind of said it before, when you broaden your market, it's actually easier to find your leads a bit because there are so many more qualified leads at that point that you can just, I mean, man, you could get Facebook ads to work with that. You could get Google ads, Google ads, not so much.

[00:23:44] This is about demand creation. And so you're trying to identify people who are the right talent.

[00:23:48] Chris: Exactly Google ads would work way worse for this Facebook ads would work way better.

[00:23:53] Brian: Yeah, Instagram would crush for this Instagram ads specifically.

[00:23:57] Chris: Yeah. The reason for this for you guys that don't pick up on this is Google generally is about finding people who no, what they're looking for.

[00:24:04] Brian: Yeah, I call that demand harvesting. That's what I use. Like Google ads is demand harvesting. You're like the Chris Graham's of the world showing ads for people looking for mastering services. That's someone who's already reached that part of the supply chain. That part in the machine. And now they're looking for the Chris Graham's of the world.

[00:24:18] Like who's going to master our song. It's not that many people like, you know, how many people search for those sorts of terms in the grand scheme of things. And it's not that many. So that's demand harvesting, that's Google ads. So the other type is demand creation, which is Facebook ads where you're saying, Hey, you don't know about this thing.

[00:24:33] So you obviously don't have any demand for it, but I'm going to show you this cute little video, and now you want it. I'm going to show you this image. And now you need this thing because you now know it exists. So you've, I've just created demand for this.

[00:24:45] Chris: This happened to me this week.

[00:24:47] Brian: This happened to me this week, too. If there's like some $400 air purifier thing that I now want.

[00:24:51] And I didn't know it existed before.

[00:24:53] Chris: For me, it was, I was on Facebook and there was the back to the future DeLorean from back to the future part too. And it was like, yeah, hover. It's like a, a desk decoration and it hovers above the base.

[00:25:06] Brian: Oh, cause it's magnetized.

[00:25:07] Chris: Because it's magnetized. And I was like, it's like 60 bucks, which I, I was like, Oh man, not only do I want this, I want to buy this as a present for like everyone in my life.

[00:25:16] That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. Well, I didn't even know that such a thing existed. And now like, I've thought about it like 57 times.

[00:25:23] Brian: Let me take that back to our listeners right now, if this kind of model is even remotely interesting to you, because think about this. Like if I'm a career individual, my life, and my focus is my career. I'm making decent money. I am focused on corporate America or my business or whatever it is that I do.

[00:25:38] I have a side passion for business, which I know, I know a bunch of people like this. They are like a hundred percent in the software world, a hundred percent in the blogging or YouTube world, but they don't know how to actually make music or at least well, but they have some bass and talent with them.

[00:25:53] That's the thing they're like, They are creative types of people. I'm typically surrounded by those sorts of people. So there's a little bias there, but there are people in those worlds that match that criteria that have no idea that there are people out there like Joe Wadsworth and like our listeners that can help them take there raw talent and their desire and create music from scratch from start to finish all the way through.

[00:26:15] They don't know that's the thing they can do. So all it takes is for you to say, this is possible. Here's how our process works. Here's what it looks like. And if you're interested, here's how you can contact us. Period. And the new objection crush, you don't have to have a song written. You don't have to have X, Y, and Z.

[00:26:33] All you need is the desire to want this. And I mean, you can say a good voice or whatever, but people can't really assess for various reasons, but you can help qualify. And that's where if you have enough people filling out a form, The more people are willing to fill out what I call a low friction form, which is just name, email a message, which is the lowest friction for them.

[00:26:52] You can really do. There's actually lower, but I'm not gonna get into that. Then if you've got a lot of people willing to throw out a low friction forum and it's too many, and you're getting really bad leads when you start doing paid ads. You start adding friction to that form, asking more questions, doing things that qualify them, meaning like, is this someone I even want to work with?

[00:27:09] And like, if it's not, I want them to weed it out. As soon as possible, you can only do this. If you have a shit load of leads coming in the top of your funnel, and it's so much easier to have a shitload of leads coming in the top of the funnel. If you are marketing in a blue ocean with eager people that now know your thing exists, and they're willing to step through your multi-step form, it asks for 30 things.

[00:27:29] Chris: And there's a big piece when it comes to this form stuff. And I've talked about this, I think on the podcast before, or maybe I haven't, maybe I forgot about this. I talk about it when I'm coaching all the time. When you are trying to get a bunch of leads to go through a funnel, there are two things at play.

[00:27:44] There is friction and there's momentum. And this is how I thought about my business from cheese. Pretty much close to the beginning. This was the thing I came up with to explain to myself, I was going to go to this business and friction in momentum work in these ways. Friction is anything on your website.

[00:28:00] It causes pause or abandonment. Maybe I'll fill this out. Oh gosh. There's a second page with 47 questions. Nevermind. I'm out. That's friction. Friction could also be like, there's an autoplay video on the website and when the website loads. Hi, are you looking for a lawyer to Sue someone who hit you with a moped?

[00:28:19] Well, Chris Graham is your man. That's my other new business. A lawyer. I Sue people that have been in moped accidents, the friction on the website, it takes an awful lot of people that come and they leave. They bounce, bounce means they leave the webpage before clicking anything, or they might start to dig in and then abandon before they finish giving you their information or finished filling out the form.

[00:28:40] The flip side of this is momentum. If Tesla, I came out with a new car that looked exactly like they're back to the future part two DeLorean and actually flew. It doesn't matter how much friction is on their website. The momentum generated by the pop culture, love of a flying DeLorean and the fact that it flies.

[00:29:03] And the fact that it's a Tesla is way more than enough that you could have the worst webpage of all time and people will still use it. That's the difference between friction momentum, the more momentum you have, the less friction matters, the less friction you have, the less momentum you need.

[00:29:18] Brian: And the way this ties back to this conversation we've had on this episode is when you're in a, what's called a red ocean. Which is, let's just say I'm an online mixing person. I do online mixing, which is that everyone's trying to do. And that's a red ocean right now because covert hit very few studios are open now.

[00:29:34] And even those that are open are still struggling to get clients because of various reasons. That's a red ocean. Everyone's tried to online mixing. So what are you going to do to stand out? And if you don't stand out, then there's not much momentum. It's going to carry someone to that. Third step in your form.

[00:29:46] The third page on your form. If you have a really high friction form, that's why I tell people if you're not getting more than five to 10 quotes per month, but requests per month, you need to have a low friction form on your website. Now go back to this where you're in a blue ocean and you are looking for aspirational people who I have always wanted to write a song or have an album or whatever.

[00:30:05] To leave their legacy musically behind. And you're not really competing with 10 other studios because these are the people that haven't really been targeted with ads. These are people that really haven't seriously considered this before you're planting a seed in their mind that they can actually achieve something that they've never really thought they could do.

[00:30:20] So now you've built this brand new opportunity and you're the only one that's convinced them that they can do it because your video or your image ad or whatever it was that they saw, I convinced them. And so you can have as many steps as you want on your forum. They want that. So they're going to fill it out.

[00:30:34] Now there's a limit to that, obviously, but it's just, there's a lot more momentum that will overcome a lot more friction when that's the case.

[00:30:40] Chris: And not just that, if they have no way to make music, except with you, they coming back, they're going to hire you again.

[00:30:48] Brian: That's also true repeat customers for sure.

[00:30:50] Chris: Yeah, they're much more likely to repeat and hire you.

[00:30:53] Brian: And if they're salaried employees, that means you can expect consistent returns to that. Yeah.

[00:30:58] Chris: Yeah, there's a budget component.

[00:31:00] Brian: It's like, Oh, you have a, you have an extra five or 600 bucks a month. Just come out here every month. We'll work towards the next step in the process. If that's maybe the, maybe one month, we get all the song writing done and the preproduction, the second month you come in and we'll get everything recorded and edited the next month we'll come in.

[00:31:14] We'll get, and we'll just come in every month and you'll put a little money towards it. That's the case. Go for it. If not, maybe they can. Put it all up front. It doesn't mean it's your business. You can do it however you want, but I'm just trying to paint the picture that this is a completely different blue ocean kind of opportunity that people have not.

[00:31:27] I considered before in this community that I've seen

[00:31:30] Chris: And let me play devil's advocate. You mentioned something when we were planning for this episode that like, will your book, well, he didn't use that voice, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna use

[00:31:37] Brian: is that my voice, Chris?

[00:31:38] Chris: that's your voice, but I'm gonna use the voice of somebody that's objecting to what we're saying right now.

[00:31:42] And they're the basic ideas. Yeah. But they're going to be trashed musicians.

[00:31:46] Brian: Wait. I mean, you did use the Rebecca Black name except us.

[00:31:49] Chris: mean, well, I mean, that's a catchy song. I can still sing it. That's a

[00:31:53] Brian: Oh, man.

[00:31:54] Chris: my point here is that I think a lot of people respond to like, man, I don't know, like, Oh, I really want to like work with respectable people. Cause man, I know what people think. I'm awesome. Does it take more talent to take somebody who is awesome?

[00:32:07] A musician that's awesome. And make them sound slightly more awesome. Or to mentor somebody and bring them all the way up from aspiration to product.

[00:32:17] Brian: Obviously the second one is more difficult. I think the pushback people have is they would rather be working with the highest talent of musicians. The problem with that is those people already have people they're working with. You're not going to steal those high quality, like a list artists from any of the producers that are doing that.

[00:32:33] So the people that this business model makes most sense for are those that are either struggling right now, doing something in a really red ocean or they're new in this business. And they're just trying to get started doing anything.

[00:32:44] Chris: Well, and let's talk about red ocean a little bit more. It is frustrating when you see somebody who thinks to themselves. Oh yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. What does that mean to you? It means I try to steal customers from other businesses. Oh, you're a red ocean entrepreneur. Eh, I'm not pumped about that.

[00:33:04] There's something you're adding value to society. If you're able to steal the customer, you know, you're helping the marketplace, but man, if you're generating demand in the blue ocean, You are creating a new category. We mentioned Steve jobs last week, you're creating an iPod, popularizing it, you're creating the iPad.

[00:33:23] making a huge market. You're creating the iPhone and changing the face of the world. And then the red ocean people jump in the Samsungs and the HTCs of the world or whatever. I'm not a phone guy just cause I have an iPhone. Like once again, I'm not going, I don't know what the competitors are. Yeah. I mean, come on.

[00:33:38] What do you think? So it's so much more interesting. And to me respectable, And not to say that you have to, everybody should do this, or everyone should do this all the time. But I think entrepreneurial creativity is the most interesting in the blue ocean because you're meeting demand that people aren't even aware that exists.

[00:33:57] And that to me is just the coolest thing in the world. That's. What I get excited about the businesses that I want to be a part of are doing something new. Not like man, you know what we should do. We should launch a new podcast, Brian. And it'll be exactly like that other podcast that I really liked from that other dude.

[00:34:13] We're just, it's going to be the same, man. We'll just copy that. Copy.

[00:34:17] Brian: We're using some phrasing that I just want to make sure everyone understands red ocean blue ocean. There's an episode where we talk about this a little more in detail, episode one 14 for blue ocean niche ideas to get you to profitability ASAP blue ocean just means it's like Clearwater's, there's not a lot of competition and it's a lot easier to be an entrepreneur or a business in a blue ocean.

[00:34:35] Red ocean just means. It is Savage. There are body parts and blood being emptied into it because it is brutal to compete in a red ocean and online mixing right now is the red ocean and mastering mastering has been a red ocean for awhile.

[00:34:49] Chris: Smashing has been a red ocean for a while. Yeah. And it's, you gotta find it something new to do there. My first business that really took off in a big way was Chris Graham mastering. What put me in the blue ocean was it was easier for people to. What mastering was when they went to my website. If it was something they didn't really understand, if this is your first record getting mastered and you saw that before and after machine, especially right.

[00:35:11] When it came out, it was like, Oh, got it. I understand what this is and I need it. Cool. So what I was trying to do there, and I think what was really fun, I don't do this anymore. It's been a couple of years since I've done this, but. I tried to  customers from the blue ocean. And the way I did that was this was pretty complicated.

[00:35:27] And, you know, it's something it's different for everybody, but more, if something that you would want it to through coaching, then you would want to try to figure it out yourself or hear about it on a podcast. But I would find YouTube videos that I thought that my ideal customer would watch. And for me, a lot of those YouTube videos that I've had a lot of success with was basically how to master your own music.

[00:35:48] And so, like I would advertise in Graham Cochran's videos on this I'd advertise on tons and tons of videos, and I would target these specific videos, which is possible, but very difficult to do. If you're not experienced in this, I would run an ad on that video before it ran. That was basically, Hey, are you trying to master your music?

[00:36:06] Hey, are you having a really hard time? Hey, did you know that all your favorite songs were mastered by one guy and mixed by somebody else? Hi, I'm Chris Graham and I'm a mastering engineer. Did it. And so what would happen is there was a huge customer segment of people that were like, I've never gotten a record master before, but I record my own music all the time.

[00:36:23] Huh? I guess I'll send them a sample. Oh my gosh, this sounds so much better than what I did myself. Oh my gosh. I'm gonna hire him. So this was cool. Cause I didn't steal the customer from some other mastering studio. They weren't going to hire a mastering engineer and I convinced them to do it.

[00:36:37] Brian: You basically created a market for yourself and that's the gist of this entire episode is what sort of market can you create for your own services?

[00:36:44] Chris: Yeah, as opposed to, and I hope this is a light bulb moment for you guys, as opposed to, how can I steal somebody else's customers? That was something that frustrated me about even like churches here in Columbus did they'd grow really fast. And I was like, well, cool, cool, cool, cool. How many people had never been to church period that came, or how many people left other churches to come to yours?

[00:37:06] Brian: The mega church model.

[00:37:09] Chris: Exactly. Having 10,000 people on a Sunday morning, there's a lot less cool. When those 10,000 people just left their other church to come to yours. It's a lot cooler if nobody and sorry, we're taking this in a weird Christian direction, but the church is way cooler and more like the one Jesus built. If the people that are there have never been to church before,

[00:37:27] Brian: That's why we have a death metal worship team at my church. That way it brings in people that you wouldn't.

[00:37:31] Chris: is that true?

[00:37:32] Brian: That's a lie. That's a lie.

[00:37:33] Chris: Oh man. I was

[00:37:34] Brian: I'd bring it in a new market though. Wasn't it.

[00:37:37] Chris: I was going to be like, we're going the next time. I'm in town and COVID has led church. Oh my gosh. Oh,

[00:37:47] Brian: there's a lot of Christian metal in the world, so it just has to have been a church that has, it kind of had a heavier, heavier swing to their worship.

[00:37:54] Chris: Okay. So let me kind of sum up our episode for you. So what we're looking for is aspirational clients versus clients that are done and ready that have done the work we're talking about raw talent versus refined talent. We're talking about raw talent with nothing. Other than like five good notes, they can sing versus refined talent, which is they've put in their 10,000 hours.

[00:38:15] They've written great songs. They're excited about the songs they've got the budget. It's just, it's such a small amount of people that the business opportunity starts to get interesting. When you can get a heck of a lot more people in the door with this type of business model, I would think that you would want to pitch yourself in a way that gave you a lot of control.

[00:38:34] Cause you got to keep the ball rolling. You don't want to be in a situation where they're like, well, I don't know if I looked that vocal take or not. I'm the producer. This is my project. That one was good. We're going to the next song. Okay. You need to be in a position of power here to work with this type of customer.

[00:38:48] I think the pushback for most people. Is an ego based one, the dirty jobs. Brian, you said this earlier, when we were talking about this episode, the dirty jobs are where there's the most opportunity. If you're working with just anybody off the street, is this business going to be fun? No. If you can generate enough demand where your top of funnel is big enough and you've got a good filter system, it's going to be awesome.

[00:39:10] This is about generating demand.

[00:39:13] Brian: You're not trying to build an outlet mall recording studio, where anyone can just walk in. You're trying to build an application only where you have enough applicants to where you can be choosy of who you work with.

[00:39:23] Chris: Yes, exactly. And at that point, if you get 50 or a hundred people, it applies, some of them are going to be awesome. 50 or a hundred people there's enough, like raw talent to work with there. And the big idea here that it would really please me to look back on the legacy of this podcast and to see not just a lot of people.

[00:39:42] Did it, they live the dream as a result of some of the stuff they've learned from us, but that they did it in a blue ocean, that they created new things that they leaned into their creativity and created new markets from scratch and grew the entire size of the music industry versus tried to compete with other people in the music industry to steal a limited number of clients that exist.

[00:40:07] That makes sense, man. It would be so cool. If that was some of the fruit of this podcast that people were really going after. Well, I'm going to bring more people into the music industry. And I, you know, I started with this girl, Chelsea, that's a true story. When I was producing this girl was not performing.

[00:40:23] Her songs were not done. She had some ideas and I, I did the whole thing and she sang and it was great.

[00:40:29] Brian: This sort of business creates the opportunity for you to build a business that you will truly enjoy. Despite the potential negatives, because I don't care what business you have, what genre you're in, what service or product you have. There are things about anything that you do that can suck tremendously, but that doesn't mean you can't build your business to remove those things or hand those things off to someone else.

[00:40:50] So like, Every business I've ever had. I have had parts of it that I absolutely despise. And those are the first things that I, as quickly as possible, either automate or hand off to another person, there is no perfect business. So if anyone's out there listening right now, that's looking for that perfect business that fulfills them, build it.

[00:41:07] It's not going to just fall into your lap, build it.

[00:41:14] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. My challenge to you post episode now, just to go out, build the business that you want and do not expect it to fall in your lap. Just like I said, at the very end of that episode. Now I want to take a second to give you your friendly reminder, that part of building that business that you want part of taking those things off of your plate.

[00:41:33] That honestly suck, but you don't want to do. That are really annoying, are putting tools into place that help alleviate the stress around those things. And so, as a mixing engineer, one of those pieces of stress that I hate more than anything is when I get into something called a revision, hell, this is where you have a nitpicky client.

[00:41:51] They ask for all the changes under the sign, turn this vocal part up 0.5 DB, turn this bass guitar down one DB. This synth line should be a solid wave instead of a sine wave. I just get really nitpicky about it. And that's why we built foul pass is to help. Deliver you from revision Hill. And there's a bunch of ways we do this.

[00:42:11] One of those ways is through our timestamp comments. So you just send the link to your client. They open it on their phone or their desktop. And as they're listening to the song, they can just type comments and leave it directly on the way file. So you don't have to guess what they're talking about. You just see the pin directly on the file.

[00:42:27] Where they're talking about it timestamped to the second. So you have pinpoint accuracy on those revision requests and another part that we're adding very soon on our next update is that Zapier integration. So you can start tying these different tools that you're using together. For example, you can integrate your CRM with file paths.

[00:42:44] You can integrate any invoicing software you want with file pass. You can integrate Google sheets with file pass. You could integrate better proposals with file paths. Hell if you want, you can find clever ways to even integrate file paths with Facebook or Instagram. You can basically integrate file paths with any of the 2000 plus apps  Zapier integrates with.

[00:43:04] And that can create some really, really fun automations. And I'm going to create some more content around this in the future, just so you can kind of get an idea of how to use Zapier in your business, but this is really powerful and it doesn't stop with just file pass. There are so many things you can tie together.

[00:43:16] And before I wrap this episode up, I want to mention that another way that we actually alleviate the stress of revision hell is through our lossless streaming feature. So when your client streams the file on any device, it is always the full quality file that you uploaded. So if you upload a 24 bit 44, one wave file to file pass, your client will stream back.

[00:43:34] That exact file. We do not dumb it down. We did not encode it down to a cheaper file. And this is what you get with. Things like Dropbox and Google drive, or God forbid, SoundCloud, any other streaming that your client does, there's going to be an MP3. It will always dumb it down. That's because no other file sharing platform, it takes the time care, energy, and money required to allow your clients to stay WAV files.

[00:43:55] And that's because we understand that file pass how important the full resolution wave file is to making sure your client is hearing exactly what they should. So if you want a free 14 day trial file pass, just go to file. pass.com. Sign up for a free trial right now you'll have full 14 days. So that is it for this episode.

[00:44:12] That's all I have for you this week. Tune in next week, bright and early 6:00 AM Tuesday morning for another episode until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.